Estela Abigail Rivera Vasquez, a 35-year-old woman, was fatally shot in her Rostraver Township, Pennsylvania, home on the night of February 5, 2025. A native of Cunen El Quiche, Guatemala, she had moved to the United States seven years prior, seeking a better life and to escape an abusive relationship. In the years since, she had settled in the Belle Vernon area, working at Sarris Candies in Canonsburg and previously at Quality Pasta in Charleroi.
She was a mother to three children, ages 11, 13, and 17.
On that Wednesday evening, one of her children called 911 from a closet to report that their mother had been shot. When police arrived at the Route 136 residence, they found Estela in the basement with a gunshot wound to her chest. She was transported to Penn Highlands Mon Valley Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Outside the home, police encountered her live-in boyfriend, Robert S. Chaplin, who was intoxicated and claimed the shooting was an accident.
Chaplin, a 34-year-old from South Carolina, was taken into custody and subsequently charged with criminal homicide. He was arraigned and held without bail at the Westmoreland County Prison. Investigators found a firearm and several spent shell casings on the basement floor near where Estela was discovered. Her family described her as a hardworking and dedicated provider for her children. They revealed that she and Chaplin had met about a year before her death and had moved into the home with her children just three months prior.
In the months following the incident, legal proceedings against Chaplin began to unfold. During a pretrial hearing in February 2026, prosecutors argued for the inclusion of evidence related to Chaplin's alleged history of domestic violence. A former girlfriend testified that Chaplin had assaulted her and threatened her at gunpoint nearly a decade earlier. Estela's sister also testified, stating that Chaplin had been violent and aggressive towards her sister, who had been his manager at Quality Pasta. Prosecutors contended that this pattern of behavior was relevant to the case and demonstrated that the shooting was not accidental, as Chaplin maintained. The trial was anticipated to begin in May of the following year.
